Written by Meg McKinlay
Illustrated by Nicky Johnston

Walker Books Australia, November 2024
 Ages 3+

How to make a friend …
                              and how to be one
When to stand up …
                              and when to sit down
How to make a mudpie …
                              and how to care for a magpie

There are so many wonderful things to know, as you grow!

This gentle and generous guide to growing up comes gorgeously packaged in a hardback gift edition, perfect for all the little people in your life.

What Readers Are Saying:

Behind the Story

Do you like soup? I love soup! Pumpkin! Broccoli! Hearty vegetable!
But my favourite soup of all is the creative soup – the swirling mix into which we pour our little offerings, sending them off into other lives.

This book comes from that very soup. It comes via a podcast, which came about by a piece of writing about architecture, which itself came about via who-knows-what but definitely something, because inspiration leads to inspiration leads to inspiration, and now it’s led to a picture book.

In 2022, I was listening to 99% Invisible, one of my favourite podcasts, which describes itself as “… a sound-rich, narrative podcast about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world.” Episode 400 was gloriously titled “The Smell of Concrete After Rain”, a phrase which host Roman Mars noted was drawn from a list called “Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know”, by Michael Sorkin, an architect, urbanist, critic, and force for justice and equity in design.

I had never heard of Michael Sorkin or his list but was immediately captivated by its mix of practicality and whimsy. An idea began to form. At the time, I was working on Always Never Always, a playful little handbook-style picture book for budding adventurers/all children, so perhaps the fact that I was in quirky instructional mode already also had a part to play. In that sense, you might say my own work was also part of the creative soup that led to this new one.

In any case, I began to tinker – jotting down lists of potential “Things a Child Should Know” in the style of Sorkin – and once I paired that with some language play …

How to find your way out of a maze
How to be amazing

How to make a mud pie
How to care for a magpie

… the manuscript was on its way.

I did have some concerns. Was I being lazy? Was this really writing? Or was I just recycling someone else’s idea in a vaguely unethical way? I thought long and hard about the creative soup and how I would feel if I were Sorkin or Roman Mars and someone had made something in response to my own work, and I decided to set those worries aside. It was a lovely moment a couple of months later when in Episode 402, “Instant Gramification”, I heard Roman say that one of his favourite things ever is “that creative inspiration/cross-pollination thing”.

Me, too, you guys. I hope you like this book. I wrote it but so did many other people, and I thank them all.